Guild Wars 2

I’m really interested in the lore of all these new (and old) factions that have sprung up this past year. It doesn’t have to be the main focus of an update, but maybe like you’ve done in Ebonhawke, there could be accounts on the origins of e.g. the molten alliance or the zephyrites scattered someplace. A story about their beginnings would be really exciting, or so I think.

Concerning Scarlet, I don’t think she’s all too bland a villain. The story featured on the website was very intriguing and I hope we’ll get to see more of that backstory and with that, some better insight into Scarlet’s motives. Because of that story, I’m kind of expecting the Pale Tree won’t remain on the sidelines of Scarlet’s story, so this could still become very interesting.

I like the way upcoming content is hinted at before the actual update announcement, like you’ve done in Kessex Hills. Just changing the environment or adding new npc’s with some teasing dialogue. You could even use previously introduced npc’s for that. That’d be even better, actually. Well, just keep on teasing us with (seemingly) little changes to the persistent world!

A cool idea that just came to me is that maybe you could slowly introduce new regions by first making smaller instanced parts of a map. All these instances could have a story that would eventually lead the player to the next instanced area until you’re ready to fuse them all into a persistent living map like the ones we now have. The story revolving around the elder dragons could advance this way as well. Trahearne and the Pact could be involved again in a push against some dragon’s minions towards it’s lair not unlike in Orr. Or it could go a different way, that’s up to you guys of course. All those different areas would have some meaning to the players who joined in on that particular story. I think that could be neat, if we’re looking, for example, a year after said story with newer players running around, not knowing what exactly happened there. kitten , I’m liking this idea. :p Yes I very much like kittens, thank you.

But the point that I initially wanted to make, is this: please just don’t leave things hanging. And don’t wait too long until everyone’s forgotten about it. I’m talking about Mai Trin and Canach mainly. Especially Canach is such an interesting villain or a possible situational ally even. A prison instance where we could talk to previous antagonists could be a nice addition. Fleshed out characters make the best stories! But that’s just my opinion.

Many thanks for reading through this and all the other posts.

Nice to see most people actually bring up some valid points and decently written opinions.

For me the living story is decently done for the most part, though I have to say it’s the holiday ones (Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash etc.) that I enjoy the most and it seems to be the ones you guys do best simply because the other ones (related to the “story” part of the content) just seems a little off.

I’ve seen a few posts mention that with the story aspect is a little weak and I can’t agree more. You guys came up with all these ideas for villains and stuff where it wasn’t really needed. I mean some were good, other’s weren’t.

The Molten Alliance – Good prospect since by the end of the personal story/dungeons we’ve been pounding these guys into the dirt and while the content was stretched out quite far when it was originally released (albeit you didn’t have the whole 2-week release dates yet) I rather enjoyed the finale being the dungeon and I can’t wait to have it back.

Southsun/Karka – the opening of Southsun was great but unfortunately there was no point in coming back this place until you gave us the Karka Queen, which is something to keep in mind for future map releases (as there’s still a lot that we’d like to see).

Aetherblades/Scarlet – This is where the confusion and “why?” keeps coming from. What was the point of these two? Sure, ideas for new content but you’ve stretched them out over five months with the map invasions, new dungeon path, returning mini dungeon, which were all pretty good but at the same time why Scarlet? She has nothing over the more formidable forces in the game (eg. the Dragons and their minions) and frankly she’s just not that intimidating.

Point is, you guys came into this game with more previous ideas than you could ask for. You have all the GW1 related lore that could make for much more interesting content than Scarlet. Lots of us are still waiting for the return of the Mursaat!

Even disregarding GW1 lore if you’re going to continue a “living story” why not continue it where we left off at release? The only real one was the Molten Alliance but they just kind of dropped off the face of Tyria after a single foundry was downed.

Why not continue with Orr? You don’t have to delete the original Cursed Shores, Straights or Malchors, just make revised secondary maps that show the revitalization of Orr or continue the eradication of the undead. Personally for Orr, I’m still hoping we find Zhatain again in the depths of Arah with a more challenging dungeon path experience because, let’s face it, Zhatain was just disappointing.

So in closing, I’d much rather see the “living story” continue with the original plan of the dragons, or at least expand into them. It doesn’t have to suddenly be “Hey Jormag dungeon” but could be as simple as a new underground map with new destroyers and fingers crossed a Kilroy Stonekin mini game!

Okay, let me try and sum up everything that has been said so far (multiple times) that I agree with.

1) The Living Story updates happen too fast. This would not be a problem if the content was permanent.

2) The Living Story updates are not meaningful to the story at large. This would not be a problem if they connected to previous GW lore. Additionally, they don’t affect the world at large.

3) The Living Story updates do not present meaningful achievements or challenges.

4) The Living Story updates are not well-written.

In case you are worried about incorporating GW1 Lore into GW2 for the sake of players who didn’t play the original game: I did not play GW1 and I do not care. Give me a chance to learn some of the lore from GW1! Connect it in a backwards fashion to what I’ve already experienced. That will keep me happy.

Short and simple: continue with the lore that was established before LS, make it a part of it. Not just the dragons, but for instance the Khan Uhr, Destiny’s Edge, Caudecus/Shining Blade etc etc. There is SO much excellent lore in game that is not utilized or expanded upon. A kitten shame in my eyes. LS has added some nice characters, though the implementation of some was lackluster in the story department, quality of life fixes etc, all nice and good, but I think its time to focus on the actual lore that exists.

Regardless if that approach is taken: make the story more conjoined. It feels (might not be the case) like theres a lot of different stories slapped together. Get one solid, fleshed out story and present that to us in chapters, with every team working on a differemt chapter, but ensure that the story is clear and conjoined.

Good luck!

Xenesis.6389:

There’s been a problem brewing on sor for some time, it just hadn’t reared it’s ugly head before the season started but it’s something I noticed as the weeks went by, a certain attitude from sor guilds and and sor commanders. Last week “for the fights” mantra I kept hearing really made me disappointed in sor as well. Look, every player and guild has the right to play the game however they want, I’ve been a part of guilds like that, but there is a time and place for these things.

We all have had an entire year to go around to just “for the fights!” and not worry about the scoreboard, the moment we started the season that should have been put aside until certain things happened. When we’re far ahead or behind in score with no chance of the score flipping towards the end of the week, hey forget the siege and go for the fights, no one would have a problem with that.

The first three days of a match up when we’re all fighting to take the lead put your efforts before yourselves and do something for your server, get the points from ppt or grab the orb buff and get to stomp. If you can’t find it in yourself to help your server win a match up in a season then please get off the top 3 servers where everyone went to get the top competition. You can find fights just as well fighting on the other side and arrange your gvg’s as well if that’s your thing.

It’s sad that sor is not motivated by the season, servers like maguuma and sos fought and stayed in gold league while others may have tanked, even though they have no chance to compete in it. I’m glad they’re making a wvw overflow map, a lot of guilds are going to fit right in there, no points for the server, plenty for yourselves, and nothing but fights.

Sor is self destructing because of the guilds, some of them are unwilling to play with others, they pull good players from the server into their guild and then play among themselves. I’ve heard commanders sound disgusted they have too many pugs with them, some will do things to shake them off, some commanders are unwilling to work with pugs at all, which I think is very important to maintaining numbers on your side.

If you are not out there leading whether we’re winning or losing with the pugs they will give up wandering around aimlessly getting slaughtered. But I suppose that’s what you want right? well 12:30pm on a saturday outmanned on a bl, the pugs have already given up and the ap hunters are gone so who’s left to fill the space?

Now you guilds have what you wanted, an open queue and a ton of bg to fight, but the price? There is hurt pride and broken morale all in the name of just looking for fights to fill your bags up, and it’s only week 3 of 7 where we were expected to compete for first, instead what’s left of the season is talk of waiting to 2v1 with jq on bg on week 7, so I guess we should just get the karma train running for 4 weeks huh.

I know commanding the pug zerg can be trying on the nerves, but if you want better players you need to train and lead them, all I ever hear is blame being set on them for anything that goes wrong. Even the week before the season I mentioned in chat that commanders should be out and leading, and yet I got back the “it’s training week for guilds” that attitude was bound to bite us back.

Then I constantly hear well bg has two times our numbers, of course they do they use their pugs, you fight with your minimum numbers and claim to have better skill but unless the lag and skill lag goes away completely, or you have more skillful players than the other side then it means nothing, numbers will crush you and be available at more places than you can be at once. Your pugs will also not get better if you keep throwing them to the wolves, ridicule them, and blame them for everything.

As an SBI player, I can actually relate. Our first match, against FA, we had this problem. I actually heard a commander on TS talking as he tagged down because he didn’t want any pugs to follow him. So, we had almost all of FAs BL at that time. Within 10 minutes of him tagging down, we had only 1 tower.

Communication was horrible that first week, and there was plenty of “for the fights” crap that people who are losing spew. The reality is, the season is a competition, and you are supposed to fight to win.

And, people really forget that they were new to WvW at one point, or even that they were pugs at one point. Commanders are more important for pugs than they are for guild groups. Commanders need to organize and COMMAND your forces. If you don’t understand that (and the fact that the pugs are on your server, which means they are part of your force), then you need to step down as being a commander.

scootshoot.6583:

Seriously, players like you are such tools.
good riddance

Nice, to be expected I guess.

And no sorry I’m not leaving Rall and I’m also not giving up, I play gw2 for wvw only I don’t do dungeons, I don’t do most of the new content because it’s fluff, I champ farm when waiting in queue. When bg rolled the score over us this week I was still in there havok squading flipping camps and sentries and running with the shrunken zerg. I transferred from sos to sor in order to get on a server with more people for more options to do wvw.

Yeah I am a pug not part of a main guild, but I do a lot of what is asked of any other players, I’m on TS, I do supply runs to help repair bases and build siege, I tap siege when needed the pugs get blamed for them disappearing even though the people who dropped it don’t bother to do it themselves or remind others, I run ruins for the bloodlust buff, I’ve solo capped supply camps and sentry points even in places not convenient to be in, I report enemy movements even when I lashed back “we already know” for doing so, I don’t take supply from bases unless it’s near cap or upgrades are done especially smc, you drop a ram I’m running to build it and then let a better operator use it, I don’t attack the door when asked, I stack when asked for an ambush or supply checkittenep up with the zerg formation, I eat my food and oils, I have the correct gear and specced for survival on a necro in zerg battles, I plague to help save the melee train, I plague to help commanders escape while I sacrifice myself, did I miss anything? well etc etc etc

Would just like my server to play as a team again, not as a bunch of groups out for personal glory.

I’m sure a lot of players already did a post like this… but I feel I have to do it anyway. I played GW1 for 7 years… and expected GW2 to stick with the same phylosophy (actually, this is what the developer said during the game development).

Here are the main aspects of the game that I dont like at the moment. Please dont reply just to say “so quit and we will not miss you”. I would not miss you too. Is just that after more than 8 years of GW I want to give my opinion (thanks).

1) Why an “infinite progression” system? The developer said this game was based on fun and content, not on farm and grind, but all the new updates just add new things to farm and new progressions… that are no more optional. Reaching the “max-level” requires hours and hours of farm, not fun. Farm should be only for the skin, like it was in GW1.

2) Why only temporary contents? The Living World idea is good per se, but most of the new contents are small and are just removed after few days. There are no permanent addition to the game. After more than one year there is a lack of interesting new contents to play with. In particular, players who like exploration are frustrated.

3) Why no expansions? The Living World content released so far feels like “just a filler”. It is extremely boring and quite “disconnected” in terms of Lore. The expansion approach used for GW1 allowed to add a lot of new areas to explore and new coherent storylines.

4) What about the personal story? The idea was nice (with room for improvements anyway), but after we kill Zaithan, there is no more personal story progression, and all the recent updates just ignored this aspect.

5) Is Anet scared of big events? The game contains some great events like the one in Harathi Hinterlands, with big chains. Most of the other events in the game are small and repeated every few minutes. There are big potentials in the Events mechanic, but I feel Anet should experiment more (for instance letting guilds conquer and defend outposts in PvE and letting the consequences of the events staying the world longer).

Now I dont understand why they called it GW2 instead of something else, considering that there are almost no game mechanics surviving from the first chapter.

Shonie.5297:

DevonCarver.5370:

Saying things like “populations aren’t balanced” doesn’t lead to any productive solutions because they all involve things like drastically redistributing the populations of the game.

But drastically redistributing the populations of the game is exactly what needs to happen…
That is the solution. If you’re not willing to do that, there really isn’t much discussion to be had.
Find a way to balance out the populations.

This ^^. The point of this thread needs to be discussing ALL possible options for how to address population issues. Not all can be implemented of course, but they should be discussed and analyzed.

I just feel that there is a huge disconnect between what Chris and Devon said. If what Devon said is true, we might as well close this thread, because there isn’t a lot of value to be gained. If what Chris said is true “1: This initiative is all about discussion.”, then I see a lot of value.

Again, this thread is around “World Population”. If we can’t discuss “World Population”, why are we all wasting time here?

So I red here that outnumbered buff and the new borderland bloodlust have nothing to do with server population.. Here’s the reason why I think that’s wrong and how to adress that.

The bloodlust buff is a mechanic that highly favors the server with higher player numbers. Fixing it would therefor reduce the advantage an overpopulated server has. Fixes like that won’t solve the problem completely but reduce it’s effects ingame.

If you have a larger zerg it’s easier to send out ppl to get the buff and defend it. Since there is a decay in capped camps (they go neutral after a while) a group of up to 5 players has a hard time to cap 3 ruins and defend them. For starters that decay needs to be removed what will reduce the number of players you need to get the buff. Because it’s much easier for the larger zerg to send some ppl out than for the smaller once. Secondly the stat buff is just wrong here because it helps the larger zergs massively. My idea would be the following:

- Remove stat bonus from bloodlust buff
- Add the stat bonus to outnumbered buff
- Remove magic find/experience bonus from ounumbered buff
- Add magic find/experience bonus to bloodlust buff
- Award (one time) 10 points for a server when getting a bloodlust buff
- Award 5 points for a server that interrupts an enemy team from getting bloodlust (while the timer is running)

In my opinion this should help smaller servers (a little) while also keeping bloodlust attractive. Getting it is even a little risky because the other server can interfere and get 5 points what adds a lot of gameplay options. (Bloodlust still gives points for stomping).
As I said not a fix for the problem but yet another way to lower it’s effects (multiple others have been stated before..).

In my opinion balancing server population should be a long term goal (transfer stop to overpopulated WvW servers, free or cheaper to weaker servers) but the advantage the server gets through overpopulation must be addressed as soon as possible. Things like leagues and borderland bloodlust just made this advantage even more significant what’s definitely the wrong way to go.

Ps.: Please merge borderland JPs into one and add it to obsidian sanctum what should have a separate queue. This might be a minor thing but having queues and a smaller zerg because there are 10+ people doing jumping puzzles is frustrating…

The solution: Dragons.
Put some kittening dragons in the borderlands. I’m talking Skyrim style, swoop-down-from-out-of-the-blue-and-put-the-fear-of-god-into-you godkitten dragons. Make them hard as kitten to kill and make them kitten AoE anti-zerg motherkitteners.
Have them spawn when the enemy is queued on your borderland and you aren’t. Have them give great PvE rewards to the players that kill them and give warscore to the home team of the borderlands. Hell, maybe they “defend” a keep at the expense of knocking down an outer wall section. Make them a force of chaos and make them exciting, but most of all have them be the thing that wipes the karma train so your whole map doesn’t get flipped by a blob that can only press “1”.

As I see it, the reason for score runaway is straightforward: Losing in WvW is not fun.

It’s not fun to die repeatedly because your side is outnumbered.

It’s not fun to repeatedly stage doomed defenses of structures.

It’s not fun to build siege in structures, upgrade them, and secure supply to them when the enemy server can easily wipe it all out again.

It’s not fun to try to take the offense against the winning server when their entire force can quickly use waypoint to intercept you.

I love WvW. I play it more than any other mode of GW2 and more than every other videogame that I play.

Defense in WvW is not rewarding. Structure Defense events reward much less WXP, Karma, and money than their corresponding Structure Capture events.

Defense in WvW is expensive and time consuming. Rebuilding a waypoint costs a a fair bit of coin, time, and a whole lot of supply. Building siege costs a fair bit of time and supply. Tagging siege costs a fair bit of time.

It is hard for the underdog server in a matchup to hold even one keep for any length of time. Holding on to a keep in those circumstances requires that somebody is present in it 24 hours per day, tagging siege every single hour and monitoring all approaches to it. In exchange for that large amount of work, they’ll get essentially 0 reward.

“spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players” –Collaboration is based on necessity and preference. I have people that prefer independence over integration but for those that do become part of a team the tools are not in the game to expand the collaboration. I have 4 different voip programs installed to facilitate collaboration within my server community. The guild structure is there but in order to facilitate communication across guilds I have to join other guilds and my members have to join even more guilds so that we can find active WvW participants and organize. And of course membership and participation are dynamic so the 20 person guild you worked to establish contact and coordination with can be gone in a day.
“we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc.” – My request was for ranges and proportions not specifics.
“discussion about the design principles”- The title was Collaborative Development: World population. Title it design principles of GW2population distribution and it may have sent the conversation in a different direction.
“why people think that the population causes the scoring issues”- The story about a ball team that plays a 9 inning game and only fields their team for 7 innings is the most accurate depiction of why coverage determines scoring issues. Coverage is based on population. Coverage gaps are the most acute example of population imbalance. WvW population is not equal to World population.
“design of various aspects of the game and how the team and the players view them” You have seen plenty of our viewpoints on population what is the teams viewpoint on population?
“The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this.” This point takes me back to the very first one – What tools have been put in the game to facilitate cross server(opponent to opponent) coordination? Yes 2nd and 3rd place have a shared opponent in 1st but that doesn’t make them allies. Even if the servers choose to ally based on leaders’ communication the individual players can invalidate that agreement. It won’t happen consistently in a controlled manner unless you as developers facilitate it.
In closing I saw the post about morale having a significant impact on participation. I concur and believe this is a huge factor. Leader moral, general player moral, guild organizations, alliances, server communities as a whole all are enduring fatigue and frustration while trying to make the time spent in game worthwhile without the tools needed to improve or overcome the acute effects of coverage gaps and WvW population imbalances.

Just wanted to jump in and say that I have loved the alliance suggestions. I wanted to lay out how I could see it working (sorry if something similar has been said).

It seems that most matchups are determined by the end of the weekend, so my thought was on Monday if the T1 score is greater that T2+T3 then teams 2 and 3 are forced to make an alliance. The other server will now appear green instead of red so there is no option but to fight with them. I think that you combine their scores at this point and they become a new color indicating the alliance. Obviously this doesn’t fit in with the ranking system, but all you do is when the alliance is formed freeze the ranking system and however each server was going to gain or fall in rankings doesn’t change the rest of the week. To encourage people to continue playing you can win a reward chest at the end of the week that either T1 or the alliance of T2 and T3 can win. You would be eligible for the chest if you get 25-50wvw kill during the alliance period.

Something along those lines, I know its probably not a perfect idea, but I think it would make the weekday more fun for blowout matches. I think I saw Devon posted earlier he was surprised this didn’t happen more naturally to begin with and I think it seems to be and unwritten rule that you don’t form alliances. Any time that I have seen people do this or try to do this people become very angry. It really doesn’t make sense because it makes for betting fights. I know the one time (a while back) this happened to Ehmry Bay. I think we were beating Anvil Rock and Borlis Pass by a large margin and they agreed to an alliance. It was awesome an week. Instead of being bored and steam rolling we had interesting and difficult fights. Being constantly double teamed in eternal made for some really epic keep defenses.

TL;DR: Some sort of alliance system would really help with population imbalances and make matches a lot more fun.

Edit: many other great posts in here about adjusting PPT too, I’m just not sure whats best.

As it stands now, fixing population imbalances isn’t going to happen. Therefore, we need to look to something else.

Instead of tinkering with population, we can tinker with the PPT objectives offer. Taking something from the #1 in a match should yield more points than something you take from the #3. Also, this effect must be stronger when the #1 is very far ahead, but as weak as possible when the match is fairly equal.

I suggest adding a factor to the PPT for objectives on enemy borderlands based on the current scores of a match.
For example:

World A has 180k points,
World B has 150k points,
World C has 120k points.
The total amount of points is 450k, so the average is 150k.

Now we divide each world’s points by the average to get a factor:
Objectives in A’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 180k/150k = 1.2x regular PPT
Objectives in B’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 150k/150k = 1.0x regular PPT
Objectives in C’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 120k/150k = 0.8x regular PPT

We do still have a problem: each world will hold their own BL and EB corner most of the time, so this would be very beneficial to #1 while hurting #3. Therefore, your own borderland and EB corner should always be regular PPT. Only when taking an objective in enemy territory (their BL or EB corner) this factor should come into play.

This means that (with the example above) A gets 1x PPT on A’s BL and C gets 1x PPT on C’s BL.
But A only gets 0.8x PPT in C’s BL while C gets 1.2x PPT in A’s BL.

Because we base the factor on the difference in scores, the effect will get stronger as the match is more lopsided, giving #2 and #3 in a match more incentive to fight for #1’s territory and makes it easier to catch up. If the match is balanced, the effect of this will become very limited (because the factors will be roughly 1.0) so it barely affects the match anymore, keeping things fair.

It will also put more emphasis on defending your home territory when you’re getting ahead in points, and more on offensive play when you’re falling behind. I think it can make some very interesting changes in tactics and strategical meta. For example, you can choose to trade a tower on your home BL for a tower on another server’s BL, because the latter is worth more points overall.

There might still be some problems with this, as I came up with it only just now, but I think it has a lot of potential. If you see a problem, please do raise your concerns and possibly solutions if you think of one.

Crazy idea incoming:

What if you could no longer resurrect at a waypoint within WvW zones?

Stick with me here:

The way it is now, if you are queued for a map, you are waiting for someone on that map to either get tired of playing or disconnect. In effect, one person is playing their preferred game-type at the expense of another.

What if (if it’s programatically possible of course) you could no longer rez at a waypoint in WvW zones? Then whenever a player is defeated, they are limited to (let’s say) 5 minutes in the defeated state before they are forced to resurrect in Lion’s Arch (or perhaps those new Edge of the Mists zones) and requeue to enter WvW.

This would have the effect of force cycling the queued population much more frequently than happens now. Instead of one person playing for an hour while another is queued waiting for that hour, it’s more likely that both players would get to play in WvW for at least part of that hour.

Yes, it’s a worse situation for the people who usually get into WvW first and avoid the queue, but it’s more equal for the playerbase as a whole.

It might have a slight zerg-breaking effect as well. Zergs (generally I’ve found) aren’t terribly organized or team-oriented. As people get dropped, a zerg is less likely than an organized group to pick up defeated people. If those defeated people are replaced with new players from the queue (who don’t know the location of the zerg immediately), I think it’s possible that the zerg might attrit more over time than an organized group would.

Yes, it would be harder for guilds and organized groups to maintain cohesion, but equally, it’s actually important for guilds and organized groups to focus on picking up their dead – counter attacking an area to get to their defeated allies before they are kicked.

This would also introduce a new risk-reward dynamic that might be interesting. People (on high population servers anyway) would be more conscious of the risks of being defeated (i.e. it impacts their playtime) and might make different choices than when defeat is just a small amount of silver and a short run back to the fight.

UltraHiDef.4809:

Sirendor.1394:

styx.7294:

I think this would be a fantastic and fresh change for season 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Where instead of 3 servers fightin the servers are split by 3 colours and fight each other with WvW guesting allowed to servers within your colour.

OMG amazing. I love it. HIT THAT +1 BUTTON!!!!

Whoever thought of this is a genius.

I was typing something about this video then I noticed someone posted it before me. I do think this is one of the best idea. This could be applied in the non season week.

DevonCarver.5370:

The way that we try and find answers to the types of problems raised in this thread are by trying to get to the heart of the issue. Saying things like “populations aren’t balanced” doesn’t lead to any productive solutions because they all involve things like drastically redistributing the populations of the game. Finding the core reasons for that like “score momentum is overpowering” allow us to attack the actual problem.

I’ve having trouble understanding this.

It sounds to me like you are saying that if the problem is hard to fix, then it is not actually the problem.

We all realize that massive population shifts are a big deal, but the truth is that we already have massive population shifts. Ruling out population shifts as a solution (or encouraging population shifts in the CORRECT direction) does not make sense to me.

Truth is, we as a community were asked what we thought was the biggest problem in WvW, and we said population imbalance. You are arguing that it is not really population imbalance, but instead game mechanics. Clearly, the community doesn’t see it that way, or we would have asked for game mechanics instead of population balance.

However, my mind is open and I’m willing to be convinced. If population imbalance is not the issue, please explain it to me.

the deal is to do with time zones and not population. of course it helps to have population, but the server with the most players in a foreign timezone is key for stupid leads which lead to the discussions we are having now

Theres not enough Australians or Chinese players to distribute to every single server, theres barely enough for 2 servers, Those servers are the ones that are refereed to as “stacked” and generate much ppt

Its to the point where if an aussie guild moved outside of JQ, BG or SOR, they will never see a fight when they log in WvW. This means it causes a circular motion for aussies to join these servers, which further heightens the PPT for a server in the late foreign hours of NA thus blowing out everyone else.

A good deterant for this is:
Australian Servers
Chinesse Servers
Maybe Russian Servers?

At the end of the day if earning PPT has some kind of reward (AKA leagues) – Servers and foreign guilds will join to stack and blow the rest out for said treasure.

Thus rewarding a stacked server for winning ppt (AKA LEAGUE), yet devising a system to handicap them if they are to strong is like having two heads walking left and right. Its seems its not to well mapped out so far imho from a development point of view

Sure you could have an auto balance. I believe the system i pointed out on page 3 still has a fix to the problem

all the ideas that would allow to move from “victory in numbers” mentality are good and would probably turn
WvW into the ultimate end game content for everyone.
I will take this opportunity to quote an idea I already posted in a thread featuring Devon Carver (the original post is available here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Anet-doesn-t-care-about-WvW-edit-pg3-INFO/2604078 )

and was this:
“many PvE folks don’t WvW, many WvW folks don’t PvE. The two tribes, instead of feeling part of the same game, look down at each other.
I suppose you agree with me that this is wrong, and a different approach should be encouraged.
Well, then why don’t you guys help us? make PvE have effects in WvW, and make WvW have effects on PvE.
Example: PvE folks win Temple of Grenth? cool, a Pact legendary champion shows up in the Mists to help WvW folks do something.
WvW folks cap towers/keeps/Stonemist? a powerful buff will prevent the guys at Grenth to be thrown in the air/a small army of Veteran Mist Warriors will show up to help/a Legendary Mist Warrior\Beast will help overthrowing the Temple.
People cap Melandru? higher regen/hp/condition resistence for WvW
People cap Lyssa? Random Boon for all the WvW every 30 secs
I could continue for days, but I suppose you already got the picture.”

such game mechanic may give a chance to balance those matchups in which servers apparently have similar average
population, when in reality only one or two make use in WvW of that population, the rest is in PvE.
So, giving importance to PvE massive events in WvW would accomplish many goals:

- more people would be attracted by such events, because they would “feel important” and understand that
they are actually contributing to the server in an understandable and widely acknowledged way.
- give a chance of balance
- add a very unpredictable factor which may lead to exciting results

the most critical factor for obtaining balance, is giving players instruments to self-counter zergs.
’Tho instead of using a “punitive policy” against zergs, try to encourage smart small scale playing:

- implement powerups (quad damage, invulnerability, gate shatter, hyperspeed, fly, mega-jump, wall crusher, map-teleport, remote vision, invisibility ecc)
- have them last 60 seconds, and make them unique (as in "only one will spawn in each map, and won’t spawn again until someone find it and use it).
- make sure them are scattered around the map, randomly appearing and disappearing in zones in which the game detects that there are less players. (I’m sure this can be done: for example, each player can have a 120 radius area that defines his presence in game. Therefore, many of those circles very close may define a zerg, creating a bigger circle with a specific center, which can also be followed while moving and thus allowing to predict with fair chances where to have Power Ups spawning).
- Obviously, even if a zerg spots a Power Up, it disappears as soon as it is approached. Let’s say, the powerup can be picked up only if there are no more than ten players (5 friendly and 5 foes in total) in a trebuchet range radius.
- give players rewards for making good use of territory (this will require to modify the morphology of the terrain, rocks, trees ecc): setting up an ambush to a large force from a small party.
- land mines (they won’t trigger for a small amount of players passing by though)

HTH and thanks for reading

Human nature makes us want to win, some will do anything to achieve victory at any cost and for the least amount of personal effort. hence population imbalance.

Why struggle for second or third place when you can simply transfer to a winning server and take the easy option?

Yet there are thousands of people who still join WvW everyday even though they know they have no chance of winning their current match. The outcome decided after 2 days, hours of effort and teamwork wiped out in minutes every day and yet they come back, day after day and start again. These are the real WvW players, not the bandwagoning easymoders and yet they get shafted every single day.

The current scoring system is so weighted in favour of ‘The Winner’ the majority of matches are over by the end of the weekend, meaningful competition is over within hours of reset. all we are left with is the game mode.

Take out the score, the achievements, the leagues (the jumping puzzles), camps, towers, keeps and you would still have people in WvW. It may not be the most exciting game in the world but people would still play and Anet could start again from an almost blank canvas and rebuild it into something a little more balanced.

There have been a number of workable suggestions made which, when put together and fleshed out could turn WvW into a game about enjoyment rather than ‘Win at all Costs’

In the age of entitlement not everyone wants things handed to them on a plate and yet the people putting in the maximum effort recieve the least reward. The guys who spend their limited game time running Dolyaks for hours so their server might manage to get a waypoint in their Garrison after yet another round of night capping, or spend their game time guarding their last T3 tower even though they know it will be gone the next day. The guild groups who spend their time trying to stop the zerg?

The game really needs to change its current ‘Winning is Everything’ attitude.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to provide a little direction here to the discussion. Firstly I want to reiterate Chris’ point in the original post: “2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.” I think there are a lot of really intriguing ideas to be found in this thread, but it’s not the purpose of this space for us to discuss what we are or aren’t doing to address the issue. More broadly speaking I wanted to clarify the types of things we take into consideration when we make large changes to WvW. One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. Changes to WvW that incentivize players to avoid others on the map or that create incentives to have a smaller general population on the map create just that problem. When we look to make changes to WvW we look towards encouraging players to play together, finding ways to empower groups of skilled players to be able to make their mark even against superior numbers, etc. Solutions to the population imbalance would absolutely have to take that into account.

In addition, we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc. and I can’t comment directly on those statistics. I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Again, this is intended to be a discussion about the design principles, and not a forum for requests for information about current projects or to request specific changes.

Thanks again for the discussion, I hope it continues to progress positively.

Score momentum is a good way to put it.

I think changing the way the score is calculated is ultimately the best way. As was suggested in a previous post, increasing the score for the 2nd and 3rd place team would be pretty good. I think if you gave rewards for the 2nd and 3rd place people would try to tank intentionally (at least the pve achievement hunters).

Instead of time based PPT every 15 min…..give points for a successfully defend (repel event, also remove the npc’kittenting camps) and a successfuly camp/tower/keep flip. Instead of a time based point system. So if you have killing it and flip everything on the map….you don’t CONTINUE to gain points and rating just for having it sitting there flipped.

Alpha an omega golems are too much effective, a dominating server can use a lot of them while their keeps and towers are resupplied with dolyaks. 6 months back, people were using a lot of alpha and you barely saw any omega, now people use a lot of omega which are way more effective.

Golems are meant to be slow, but portal allow them to move over a map even faster than players. Preventing golems from using portal or even WP could help to notice them from further and help defenders to organize.

An update was made to prevent golems to have boons, but if you buff someone before he get inside a golems, some boons stays, make sure all the boons are removed. You could also prevent golems to get buff like stealth, spirits, banners and quickness to reduce their effectiveness but also make them immune to conditions (the guy inside is protected by a steel suit).

Those things could reduce the effectiveness of golems and prevent a dominating server to easily reset every keeps and towers in a few minutes with tons of them.

Pt 5/6
And finally, my last suggestion! Although I consider this one to be the most important.
This final solution is a way to stop the Landslide at a certain point. So instead of going all the way down the mountain like we see, it is stopped midway on the mountain, and not allowed to proceed further. However, while my other suggestions were small changes, this final suggestion would drastically alter WvW. (Aka, a lot of work to program and such.)

The 4-Matchup Solution

Reasoning: My reasoning was simple. I asked myself: What is a way to stop the Landslide effect from effecting all aspects of the matchup, having extreme repercussions to everyone playing. And it came to me, break up the segments of the day, so that one does not negatively impact another. So I split up the 24 day into 4 different time periods.
The way this would work, is that each segment of time is considered a different matchup, and so score in one segment would have no effect on that of another segment.
Implementation: So we start by dividing the day into 4 segments. I like using

1. Segment 1 3:00PM-9:00PM
2. Segment 2 9:00PM-3:00AM
3. Segment 3 3:00AM-9:00AM
4. Segment 4 9:00AM-3:00PM

Now I understand that reset (for NA) falls in between a segment, but I believe it is manageable.

So after we split up our timezones, we make each one its own separate matchup. What this means is that everything that happens in one timezone has absolutely zero consequences in another timezone. After every 6 hours, the match experiences a mini-reset, where the previous data is stored, and the data from the upcoming segment is restored, starting where you last left off in that matchup. So a server has a possibility to win in 4 different timezones.

Now, the added twist, that really makes it a good system. Each segment has its own specific matchup. The segments have their own opponents, who are unrelated to the server’s other segments. Each segment has its own rating, and so each time segment faces a balanced (as much as possible) opponent for that timeslot.

This allows for servers to be competitive in a specific timezone, and not have to worry about being nightcapped or anything like that. If they stack NA primetime and nothing else, they can still be strong and compete, and not depend on offhours coverage to secure a win. This also allows a server to say without a doubt that they are number 1 in a specific timezone, because every other timeslot has no bearing on that specific timeslot’s performance.

During the downtime, while waiting for Segment 1 to come back into play, the score hasn’t been ticking. It only ticks when gameplay is active.

Pt 6/6

Pros:

• More competitive matches. We would see more competition in specific timezones (Like NA), where non-T1 servers could actually compete in a specific timezone, bridging the gap between T1 and everyone else, providing more opponents, variety, and excitement.
• No need to stack a server with 100% coverage. People who play in offhours can be strong in their timezone, without being bored against servers without coverage. And vice versa, servers with no offhours coverage wouldn’t be bored with no opponents, and getting night-capped while they sleep.
• Gives good competition (hopefully) in every segment, because you only need 6 hours of coverage. People with zero coverage in one timezone face similar opponents, making it so large crushing victories are not going to ruin the entire match.
• Server pride. A server who is rated 1st in Time Segment 1 would reliably be able to say that they are the #1 NA prime server, and can create a sense of pride in a player’s server. And larger servers can go for the Hat Trick and take a victory in all time-slots, asserting their dominance in every timezone.

Cons:

• 4 Resets a day, 5 on Main Reset day. This would be a little annoying, as gameplay would be interrupted 4 times a day, interrupting fights and sieges. I would hope Anet would be able to speed along the mini-resets, so they don’t take 15-20 minutes to start up.
• Complicated Match system. A new player entering for the first time may be confused that we fight 4 different matches throughout the day, and may be put off by it all. While some tooltips could be introduced to better explain the system, it still would be more complicated.
• Disruption of time zones. I don’t know exactly where SEA, OCX, and EU fall in the time scale, but it would be awkward if a split fell in between two segments, so the server was strong at the last 3 hours of a segment, and strong at the beginning of the next segment. It would make some smaller nightcaps happen, and would make it more unbalanced in amtchups.
• Less total points. Since each segment (Or match) would only tick for 6 hours a day, the amount of points gained would be much smaller than the grand totals we see now, and would disrupt the Server-wide effects that we gain through total points.

Note: All times based on Servertime.

[b] In conclusion, I hope I make some people think on some changes that could be done. All of this I sort of brainstormed with Me, Myself, and I, so it is definitely not perfect. I do hope that the devs can consider some of the things I have said, or maybe I give an idea that sparks the revolution! Anyways, thank you anyone and everyone if you took the time to read through it all. It is a lot to take in. And sadly, I have no TL;DR version. Gold stars to anyone who has made it this far, you all deserve a cookie! <3

Cheers, and let’s remember that this game is about having fun!

P.S. The devs have taken the time to make this thread, and they didn’t have to do it. So I think we all need to tone the hostility towards them WAY down, and keep it constructive. It takes time to read through all of these posts, and especially read them while absorbing the message we are trying to convey. Cut them some slack! Oh and if you aren’t contributing to the conversation, why not leave it out of this thread? And remember, play nice! [/b]

Pt 4/6
These are just some suggestions that fit in neither category, but some suggestions that should be considered to encourage defense.

• Defensive Rewards Make defending a keep event more accessible. Lower the event timer from 3 minutes to 1 minute. Keep the WP timer on the same 3 minute timer. After every minute, if a player has killed any enemy, downed any enemy, hit 10 enemies(Hard enough to earn kill credit, whatever that specific amount is), or contest the capture circle at any time, the defender gets credit for defending the objective. Defending an objective while outmanned should increase the monetary gain by double, if not triple the normal amount(~10 silver tripled). Every time the Defend Event ends, the rewards for defending are increased based on the number of sequential defend events a player has participated in. If the fighting has gone on for an hour, that is 60 defend events, and players should be receiving increased rewards if they have lasted through the 60 events.(Note: Just realized DR would hit kitten this, so a measure to not have that happen should be in place) This rewards the defender for a valiant defense, and increases incentives to stay and defend an objective.
• Dolyaks Return Dolyak Rewards! This vital event is still completely reward free. It is a thankless job, and it is about time you brought the rewards back, to give players a reason to escort dolyaks more often, which contributes to upgrades at a keep, which contributes to more defenses in times of attack. Maybe a point or two can be given to the total score each time a yak makes it into an objective. I think many agree rewards for this need to be returned.
• Outmanned Safety Net Make the Outmanned Buff able to be server-wide in some cases, instead of only map-specific. So if Server X has 50 players on each map, and Server Y has 20 players on each map, the outmanned buff goes into effect. However, if Server X has 50 on each map, and Server Y has 50 on a single map, outmanned is not applied on that map specifically where the numbers are equal. The point is to take into account total numbers in order to blanket a server, and give them some incentives to keep coming out.

Pt 3/6
Another way to halt the landslide is to slow down the rate at which everything falls, and gives defenders a bigger chance to hold out for longer, decreasing the points gap, allowing for reinforcements to arrive, and to give some benefits to defenders.

• Dynamic Scaling If Server X is outnumbered at a specific time, the objectives scale up in difficulty. All Wall’s and Gate’s health are increased (based on the enemy numbers, scales kinda like a dynamic event) to give defenders more time to counter an attack. This would also buy more time for defenders to destroy enemy siege. Another approach would be to increase toughness on all objectives, decreasing the damage a wall or gate takes. Can also add a buff that removes player’s abilities to damage gates (Only siege could do damage, like walls.) Even a damage cap on objectives, making it so a specific amount of siege would be completely wasted, as their damage would not be counted, could go a long way. (Discourages 40 golem rushes.) The overall purpose of this would be to slow the capping by a lot, which may include how fast the circle is captured.
• Defensive Siege Might If Server X and Z are outmanned by Server Y, so the Outmanned Buff gives a 30% increase in siege damage. At the moment, 5 superior flame rams (Easily doable with a large zerg) can burn through a reinforced gate before 2-3 superior arrow carts can destroy the rams. Giving a bonus to siege damage allows defenders to properly counter the enemy siege before it is too late, and also create scenarios where a small group could create a killbox, and try and eliminate the enemies. Consider the buff as an equalizer of sorts.
• Supply Limitations Limit the amount of supply an large zerg can find when they outnumber the enemy. If Server Y has a large numerical superiority over Server Z on a map, Server Y only has access to 70% of supply. What this means is, when they take a camp, the players go and pick up supply, losing 3 supply in the process. This leaves each player who picked up 10 supply with 7. This will limit the amount of siege the large zerg can deploy, giving defenders more of a timeframe to work on a counter, and increasing the time it takes to flip a structure. As it is now, a zerg flipping a T3 keep with 1700 supply gets access to 500 supply after the cap, which is 5 more golems, or 12.5 flame rams. With a supply cap, the 500 gained becomes 350 supply, costing the enemy 2 golems, and 5 flame rams. Supply traps, and cutting off supply lines can be a great deterrent to the large zerg, and may save objectives for much longer than normal.
• The Last Stand If Server Z is outmanned by an enemy server, all Server Z objectives earn “The Last Stand” buff. This buff gives a small(yet not insignificant) increase to toughness, healing power, and vitality to any players in range. Can also throw on the aforementioned extra siege damage to give defenders a slight edge to defend their structures. This helps defenders fight larger odds, lets them survive longer, and hopefully hold out for even longer.

Pt 2/6
To start off, my philosophy is that limiting a player’s ability to play, and their contributions to a game should never be introduced. Forcing players to play in rigid ways is an awful idea, and I avoid responding or hearing out most people because what they suggest limits a player’s contributions, or limits a player’s ability to play how and when they want. I believe me and Anet are on the same page with this.

Secondly, lots of words incoming! Lots of posts! Some things to keep in mind if you decide to stick it out and read it all:

1. Mention of outmanned in my posts should be assumed to mean all maps are considered in the calculation(unless otherwise stated), meaning you can’t keep numbers low on just one map in order to capitalize on the bonuses granted. Overall numbers on all maps are used, but if the map is nearly full with defenders, the buffs don’t take effect on that map.
2. I also use 400-500 PPT to show a difference in population at the time. (As we all know, numbers= higher PPT).
3. I use 15,000 points lead as a benchmark for a handicap. Anything below is still fairly competitive, and a server should try to succeed on their own merits. Anything above, a handicap can be useful to keep the scores competitive.
4. There are three ways to deal with the landslide as I see it. You can slow down the landslide, and you can decrease the size of the landslide, and you can make a shorter mountain. My first two posts include less drastic changes.*

My second post is how to decrease the point gap and size of the landslide.

Rewarding Effort If Server X is ticking for over 400 PPT, the remaining potential points are considered double(or an extra amount set to scale) for the Servers Y and Z. This would scale according to PPT and not be a set number, so that the harder a server is dominating, the more the servers getting dominated receive for holding the small amount they own. This gives Server Y and Z a stronger PPT, decreasing the deficit caused by Server X’s dominance. This would also increase defense incentives, as every tick counts for extra. This system would reward outgunned servers that come out to fight and do what they can, while not reducing the contributions of the people who were unlucky enough to end up PvDooring.

A Garrison Redemption When Server X loses their garrison to Server Y that is dominating (Via PPT [400-500], or Server X is outmanned), a buff is placed on the characters in the map. This buff, “Redemption,” lasts for one hour. If Server X retakes their Garrison with the buff still on, they immediately gain 50 points (Equivalent of holding garrison for 30 minutes, or 2 ticks.) The rewards for retaking garrison should be improved (doubling or tripling the gains from the capture succeeded reward.) This can discourage some karma trains, because if an enemy mesmer is hiding, and reclaims the keep before the tick, Server X just made 50 points, and lost nothing PPT wise. This would also hopefully provide reasons for people to still come out to fight. This can be applied to other objectives as well.

Upgraded Returns If Server Z is Outmanned overall, and/or Server Y is ticking 400-500 PPT, Server Z gains a special bonus when taking objectives. The objectives come partially upgraded, and are given some supply (Varies per objective, and takes into account supply left from the capture.) So say Server Z manages to retake their bay from Server Y, Bay comes with Walls and Gates reinforced, and cannons halfway done. Bay also comes with a base 300 supply. (Anything below 300 is bumped up to 300 supply, and anything above is left as it is.) This helps a server get back on their feet quickly, and makes it so the server can’t just come back and plow through paper gates and wells. Can also reduce the costs for these, whether it be the gold, supply, or both.

Two Versus One If Server Z is dominating the match, and have extended their lead to be above 15000 points between 1st and 2nd place, Server X and Server Y gain better rewards when taking objectives from Server Z. When 2nd place and 3rd place take an objective from 1st place, they immediately gain points equivalent to the PPT value of that object. So if 2nd place takes 1st place’s camp, they immediately gain +5 points to their total score. Same with Towers, Keeps, and Stonemist. The rewards for capturing objectives from 1st place are also higher for the player, with more earned from the capture succeeded event, including increased chance of drops, and higher WXP gained. (Sidenote: I contemplated a defensive version of this, defending against 1st place, but I feel that would require a lot more server usage to know who is attacking, and who you are fighting off, etc., whereas attacking, whoever caps the point is the clear beneficiary, and requires little amounts of server usage to give extra rewards for it.

Pt 1/6
Devon Carver: I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Direct response to Devon asking about how the landslide occurs: The main problem with population imbalances is the upgrades that are used on every objective. The landslide happens when Server X outnumbers Server Y and Server Z. Server X flips every asset they can get their hands on, and the other servers are helpless to stop them. This creates the intial PPT gap, in which Server X rapidly increases their Points lead over the other two servers. This creates the first gap.

When Server Y and Z log on in the morning, they see their entire maps have been flipped, and everything is paper. They now have to start the process of retaking all of their assets, and start upgrades and replacing all the lost siege. (That is a lot of money spent.) As Server Z and Y start to retake their objectives, they still have to deal with Server X, who continuously comes and recaps everything, and hinders Server Y and Z’s progress in regaining their assets.

Now, low and behold, primetime occurs. Server X, Y, And Z are all relatively equal in their primetime, and can remain competitive. However, due to Server X flipping most if not all objectives, Many of Y and Z’s objectives are not fully upgraded, and can still be paper. So normally, where the three servers were relatively equal, Server X has a huge advantage: All their objectives are T3, completely full of supply. So during Primetime, Server X makes more headway against the other 2 servers, and continues to increase their lead over the other two servers.

After Primetime, most of Server Y and Server Z still have many objectives not fully upgraded, but have gone to bed. Server X continues to push, and flips everything faster because many objectives are not upgraded and sieged out. The period of Server X dominating PPT happens faster this time, and the lead continues to widen by a large margin. When Server Y and Z log on, they look at the map, and some decide to do something else this time, and many others choose not to spend money on upgrades and siege. The reclamation after the nightcap from Server X happens less effectively, meaning more points lost by Y and Z. And Server X makes captures even easier than before, facing less opponents, and less defense.

Primetime rolls around, and Server Y and Z look at the score and decide to relax, since the match has officially been loss. Less people turn out, they try less to play competitively, and start to karma train. And that is the landslide brought on by population imbalances. It not only effects the timezone it happens it, it effects the entirety of the match, causing a close match otherwise to become completely lopsided.

I decided to directly answer the first question you posed, since you seem to want to see a player’s take on what causes the landslide.

I have quite a few selections to post as well, but they will have to go into another post in order to fit. Bear with my walls-o-text.

First I would say that as a whole anyone from Anet who was responsible for pushing the League should be embarrassed. The community who actively plays WvW on a daily basis told you it was a bad idea and not ready to be implemented. You chose to ignore it and push out a product that was in no way even remotely balanced for the vast majority of the player base. It reeks of utter incompetence, indifference, and negligence on your part. Furthermore, the final decision maker is too spineless to stand up, admit his or her error, and address the situation and efforts to remedy it.

Now that is out of they way. In my opinion the entire foundation of GW2’s WvW is so fundamentally flawed at its core that I don’t think it will be easily remedied. You have managed to make further and further mistakes in new “content” for WvW that has done nothing than promote bandwagoning and massive zerging. Almost every wxp skill you can get gives bonuses to offense and very little to defensive options. Bloodlust further benefits servers who already have a numerical advantage often times. Season Rewards and Achievements that favor the top servers in their respective leagues. The ability to transfer right up to the start of the league to already stacked servers. And lastly, a refusal to boost the “outmanned” buff into anything that actually might benefit the server with it when it comes to FIGHTING…..oh other than a free repair bill while you get farmed. Truly, a comedy of errors.

Glad you are taking your time to respond to all of these posts from your customers…..too bad you didn’t take this kind of time to realize how poorly planned your execution of Season 1 was going to be.

A quick relatively easy adjustment might be to at least address the “outmanned” buff. It wont fix things entirely but at least it might help. I suggest lowering the supply cost to build siege when you are outmanned. I would also decrease the amount of supply needed to make repairs. Make siege more effective while you are outmanned, like increasing the hp’s and damage they do. I would also increase the Guard level and damage they do, as well as increase their spawn rates. I would also suggest a substantial increase to wxp gained while outmanned.

DevonCarver.5370:

That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.

Please no. Specific timing balance will give unfair advantage/disadvantage to some servers resulting in much drama and it wont solve a thing but to make the queue time worse. You need to look at bigger picture.

What make ppl compete all the time? → When they know they still have chance to win? → less than 10k score gap on each server to be maintain

How to help 2nd/3rd servers to compete with leading server? → MORE INCENTIVES → Meaning more PPT gain if you hit 1st server, More WXP gain if you capture 1st server stuff.

2nd server always in the edge of success as the leading server will always suppress the 2nd while the 3rd server now acting as Kingmaker. 3rd server can choose to screw 2nd server because it’s easier for them to capture etc. With the new score system revised, they now have more motivated to gang the leading server with 2nd server. Making the score competitive til friday. This is how you solve the wvw attendance in long run.